


Contrition

by JaguarCello



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Europe, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Identity Issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Sexual Abuse, Post canon, Slow Build, The Winter Soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Bucky wished that he could become the ghost he was supposed to be. He was well on the way to being dead already, and with both HYDRA and the great and good of the world after him, he had reasoned that this wouldn't take too long. </p><p> He hadn't counted on Steve Rogers and his stubbornness, however.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for: mentions of torture including gaslighting, non-graphic; mention of self-harming behaviour, non-graphic and bloodless; mention of mental illness - dissociation, mainly, but including suicidal ideation and PTSD  
>  (it's cheerful I promise)

Bucky liked to haunt the museum at night like the ghost they said he had become, reading the sign about the man he had used to be over and over, until he could have recited it in his sleep. He didn’t sleep any more though, not since they had torn his memories from his head for the most recent time; they had left holes when they had done it, and they grew into catacombs in the hollow of his skull. This thought almost comforted him, when the lights had dipped to dimness and the only sound was the steady footfall of the night guards – at least his demons would have plenty of darkness to play in.

 He had watched the fallout from what he had become on the sliver of a television screen he could see, when standing in the rain outside a café. He had killed people - that much was clear, and he could kill again and would kill again. The people who had torn his life into two and watched the pieces sink into madness were nowhere to be seen, although whether this was by design or because of Steve Rogers, Bucky couldn’t be sure.  All he knew was that there were posters with his face on, plastered all over the city and the subway and the news; he was a fugitive, but he tried not to think about it. Thinking made the world seem very close and alarming, and he was comfortable to hide in the holes in his head, for the time being at least.

 He had hacked his own hair off in the same way they used to, not daring to look himself in the face. They (as far as he could remember) would only cut it when it inconvenienced them; it was a novelty to be able to decide when he wanted to cut it, and at first he had taken small snips, and then had slashed chunks of it away with the same snarling rage he had felt, high up on the Helicarrier, when he had slashed at Steve Rogers with the same knife. He was glad, now, that he had not hurt him as much as he had been programmed to do.

 Bucky had cut his hair and changed into stolen clothes and washed the war-paint from his face in the bathroom at the museum, and tourists and students had watched the black-and-blood wash down the sink in disgust. He had been worried that they might tell someone in authority, but the mothers had shepherded their children back to the gift-shop and the tourists had just stared, and gone back to taking photographs of themselves in the mirror. Nobody had mentioned his missing hand, although from what he had gleaned of the wars of the 21st century so far, amputees from war-zones were not rare, and were common when sleeping rough. This would have made him sad, but he had used up all his sadness on a boy from Brooklyn a long time ago.

 One day – a cold morning, a month after the Helicarriers had gone down – Bucky had woken in his usual place, huddled next to a storage heater and wrapped in the remnants of his old clothing to find Steve Rogers standing over him, almost comically handsome.

“You seem down on your luck,” was all he said, as Bucky scrambled for his knife and moved into a crouch, ready to attack. Steve glanced around; a cleaner was polishing the floor down the hallway, but other than that they were alone. “I’m not here to fight you,” he said, and Bucky tried to smile but only succeeded in baring his teeth. He was no longer sure if they were pointed, or if that had been a dream; it had been hard, at the beginning when they broke him, to tell the difference; he had not wanted to look in the mirror for long enough to examine his teeth. His eyes told too many stories.

“How did you find me?” Bucky asked, warily, shifting his grip on the knife’s handle. “I followed my orders to go underground, I – I followed my orders,” and he shifted his grip again. Steve didn’t look away from his face, and Bucky tensed his muscles again, readying himself to leap.

“You were watching the news outside a coffeeshop, and so was I,” Steve said, and Bucky looked up. “I was inside, I mean,” he clarified, “with a girl. A nurse, although it turns out she is not a nurse but is, in fact, a lovely secret agent,” and he smiled to himself. “Lovely, but, well. Not my type,” and Bucky tried to laugh. He thought that the old Bucky, the _real_ Bucky, would have laughed at that.

Steve watched him, and smiled to himself again. “You remember, then?”

 Bucky looked away, laughter fading, to the poster of Captain America with its bright colours on the opposite wall. “I don’t remember,” he said quietly, and looked back in time to see Steve’s face fall. “You could tell me?” he offered, and put the knife back into his pocket, and stood up fully. Steve took half a step back, and then remembered his manners, and stepped forwards again.

“When we were at Camp Lehigh, you remember – well, you’ve read about Peggy? She was the only girl who ever looked at me when I was that 95lb asthmatic stickman, and she stayed looking at me when I got – like this,” and he gestured to his muscles. Bucky tried not to look, and Steve went on. “I found her. She’s alive, but she has dementia, and she only remembers me for a few minutes before it goes again. But her eyes are still so lovely,” and he bowed his head as if in pre-emptive remembrance.

Bucky stood in silence until the floor was polished and the cleaner had shut the door behind him, and pretended to examine the entrances and exits in the room; by this stage, he didn’t need to do it manually, but it soothed him to do so. The silence stretched. “Are you going to report me?” he said, and remembered finding Steve’s spare key hidden under a brick. “I mean,” he struggled to clarify, “that there is a price on my head and I know I killed people and I shouldn’t be _alive_ at all – “

 Steve put both hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “Hey,” he said softly. “It wasn’t you, alright? People died, but HYDRA never leave an arena without ten-dozen casualties. It’s their way, and they used you as a tool, as a blunt instrument,” and Bucky nodded, but noticed the web of bruising which extended from Steve’s cheekbone across his nose, the colour deepening in his eye socket.

“I did that,” he said haltingly, and ran his fingers across the blade of the knife in his pocket until metal scraped metal and Steve winced. “I hit you, I remember – but you were a mission, and now you’re Steve – “ and his voice had risen, and the first visitors of the day – staring at Captain America in glorious rapture – were staring at him now instead. He realised that he was shaking on his feet, and he hadn’t eaten for a few days, and then he sat back down with a thump which would have hurt, if he had regained nerve function in his body yet. “They cauterised every nerve ending,” he said almost wonderingly, and Steve shut his eyes.

“Bucky,” he said, thumbs digging in ever-s-slightly into the hollows of his collarbones, which used to be smooth skin and muscle. “Bucky, you’re safe, you’re safe,” he murmured, kneeling down to look him in the eye again. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, and nor is anyone who listens to reason and right – “

 “You sound like some kind of propaganda,” Natasha Romanoff told him, pulling off her baseball cap and hunching down next to them. Bucky tried not to jump, but he remembered  how he had tried to twist her skull from her neck, and the jump of adrenaline when he had shot her in the shoulder, and how her red hair had  been bright as the blood he had spilled, and he flinched when she grinned at him. Her teeth were bright and even, and he tested out a response. It came out as more of a grimace, he suspected, but she kept smiling. “We need to get you somewhere safer than the Smithsonian,” she said quietly, handing him a drawstring bag. He pulled it open, and found a complete outfit. “It fits,” she added quickly. “We measured you using the CCTV footage,” and before he had time to be offended or worried, she had sauntered off, pretending to look at the dust-motes in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the room. Steve followed, equally as casually, but he did not look half as natural as she did. He thought that he might have found that funny, long ago.

Bucky stood up again, trying not to sway. “Where are we going?” he asked, and squeezed his knife so tightly that if his arm were still flesh and blood, it would have been cut to the bone. “Steve?” he said, more loudly, and Steve turned and beamed at him.

“We’re going to get you somewhere safe,” he replied, and dropped his voice so that Bucky had to strain to hear, over the sound of their footprints on the floor. “First, we’re going to Sam Wilson’s house. We have to assume that HYDRA is still looking for you; you’re an _asset_ and not a man to them, so we need to get you somewhere that they don’t know. And from then, Stark Tower seems to be our safest bet right now,” he added, and Bucky tried to look as if he knew what that was. Steve laughed. “Tall building, ugly, has a massive “A”, which I think stands for “asshole”, but there’s no accounting for taste. It’s Tony Stark’s place – you remember Howard?” he asked quickly, but Bucky lingered at the corner as if he could hide his amnesia by huddling under a doorframe. “It’s fine if you don’t,” he added. Bucky nodded.

“I remember bits and pieces,” he explained, as they walked towards the exit. “Being told you were the enemy,” and his hand was on his knife again. “Being shown footage of you abandoning me to my fate, and I remember being _found_. They made me walk across ice until my feet were bleeding, and they made me walk across fire until my feet cracked. It smelled like pork scratching,” he said, humourlessly. “And they – they stuck things in my head, and I remember you betraying me and leaving me to die – “ and his knife was out of his pocket and at Steve’s throat. Steve did not move.

“You _left_ me when I fell and you left me to die on the Helicarrier,” Bucky hissed, and blood beaded under the knife-blade. “I am a weapon and nothing more and this is my duty – “ and Steve moved like a whirlwind, elbowing him in the stomach and winding him, before smashing his hand into Bucky’s elbow joint and catching the knife as it fell. He wiped the blood away from his neck, and stepped out into the sun.

“You’re getting soft,” he said mildly, as if Bucky hadn’t just tried to saw at his throat. “Either that, or you’re hungry. You always have been grumpy when you’re hungry,” and he slipped the knife into his own pocket. “Time to go, I think,” and he steered Bucky to the corner of the street. “Natasha?” he said into his collar – and Bucky realised he must have a radio there, stitched to his jacket – “We’re ready,” and a dark car slid around the corner. It was almost silent, and black and sleek and shiny. Natasha leaned out to shove the door open, and nodded at them. The back of Bucky’s neck prickled, and he knew that danger would stalk him wherever he went, if he were to ally himself with his apparent old friend and a taciturn secret agent, but he nodded back.

“Nice neck, Rogers,” she said, and Bucky – guided by Steve – got into the car. Steve followed, and squashed himself so tightly up against Bucky that he could feel the blade of his knife through the thin cotton of Steve’s trousers. Natasha pushed her foot to the floor, and they sped off through the streets. “You’ll want to avoid looking out the windows when we stop at the lights,” she said, eyeing Bucky through the wing mirror. He dodged her gaze, and watched the world go by: gaudy lights and gaudy people, dogs, tattered fliers and tiny hot-dog stands and children with balloons and flowers trampled to the ground. Steve watched him, and pretended not to.

There were posters with his face on all over the traffic lights, so avoiding looking out of the window proved to be futile advice. There were signs labelling him a murderer, a killer, an assassin, a traitor, and he swallowed the bile in his throat and stared at his hands, flesh folded over metal. “They saved my life, you know,” he said, and watched Steve and Natasha exchange wary glances in the mirror. He ran one finger over the plates of his other hand. “My arm was lost already, and I would have bled out if they hadn’t saved me. They gave me a purpose even if it was twisted, and they gave me a name again,” and he fell silent. Steve looked at him.

“They took away your old name and burned away all your memories,” Steve told him. The car sped past hotels and a hospital and a church and a tiny bookstore, tucked away in the shadows of the corner of an old theatre.  Bucky thought about the face in the posters and the face in the museum and the face in the mirror, and wondered if he were splitting in two, or three, like a hydra. “They made you into a killer,” added Steve, looking at the back of the driver’s seat as he said it.

Bucky laughed at that. “And, Captain America, paragon of virtue - how many did you kill this month? Or in the war, in Europe, when men fucked the wives and murdered the men in the same night? And you, Natasha Romanoff,” and his mouth had twisted into a cruel line, “how many have you killed, both sides of the Iron Curtain?” and she stared at him, face pale. “At least HYDRA were honest about what they did. You two are the pawns of governments who don’t care about you, and you don’t seem to care too much about them. You’re _lying_ to yourselves,” he said, and shook his head.

“I didn’t know you cared,” Natasha said lightly, but her eyes were tight, and her fists were clenched around the steering board.

 “I’m sorry,” Bucky said immediately, and his face was a mask of contrition. “It’s like worms inside my head, wriggling around and making me angry,” and he folded his fingers back over one another, as if in their cage-like clasp he could hide the rest of his humanity.

The car was silent until they got to Sam Wilson’s house. He was bounding with enthusiasm over some collaboration with Tony Stark, but when Bucky walked in, Sam tensed all over. He reminded Bucky of a dog who had seen something threaten their master; if he could have raised his hackles, he would have, and his muttering – too low for someone who had their eardrums perforated thirty years ago – was almost growl-like. His hands felt empty without the weight of a gun or a knife to flick between his fingers, and he felt as if the silences in his head were appearing before him, black spots in the centre of his vision – and as he fell, he struck his head on the corner of the coffee table, and the spots bloomed until his whole vision had gone black. He felt a sharp sting of pain, and then nothing more.

He awoke to a rhythmic beeping, and wished he hadn’t. The room was hazy, and half of him felt as though he were back in Kiev, strapped to a bed with electrodes attached to his nipples and his fingers and his dick, as though bolts were shuddering through him and singing his flesh from the inside once more, and the beeping from one reality leaked through into another, and he began to thrash on the bed. He was not tied down – he could see that, as his vision grew clearer – but still he felt the weight pressing down on his legs, and the sores that the buckles would leave on his wrists. The beeping increased until a man in a white coat ran in – Bucky shrank back, fearing his needles and scalpels – but he fiddled with the IV beside Bucky’s bed until he sank bank into the bed, eyes leaden. The last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him was the bright red of Natasha’s hair.

When he next opened his eyes, the room stayed where it was supposed to, and he himself did not drift into memories, and he noticed that there was a guard on the door, and that he could make a weapon from the plastic water jug or the clipboard mechanism, and that it would take someone no more than two seconds to have a knife at his throat or a bullet in his belly. He lay back, and felt his head to find a piece of a gauze and a bandage.  Steve was asleep in a chair next to him, sketchpad left open on his knee.

He poked at the dressing with his fingers, and they came away bloody, and a nurse – blonde and pretty – came into the room with a fresh dressing.

“You’ve bled through that one,” she said unnecessarily, as she removed the old one. Her fingers were deft, and as she worked she talked. “You’ve had a bit of your head shaved for the dressing, but it will grow back, don’t you worry! And I’ve been shaving you and washing you, so you should be feeling much fresher than you did when you came in. You can be discharged later. No more sedation, I hope,” she added, and tugged on the last piece of bandage. “Is that too tight? I’ve been on infections lately, so I’m a bit out of practice with non-festering wounds,” and  he shrugged.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she paused to look at him, and then she left again, shutting the door behind her. He saw her speak to one of the guards, and then turn and walk down the corridor.

 “So,” he said to Steve, who had woken up, sending his sketchbook to the ground with a clatter, “what next?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quest continues, and Bucky begins to find memories again, in dusty badly-lit corners of his mind.   
> He meets Tony Stark, and thinks that the man he used to be would have gotten on very well with him. As it stands, he might bring out the worst in Bucky.   
> Steve and Natasha prove their worth, not that Steve ever needed to prove anything to Bucky. (He worries that it's only his new persona who thinks this, but he's seen his dopey grin on the film reel. Perhaps, some things are stronger than many-headed snakes).

“Next,” as Bucky soon discovered, was Stark Tower. It was as tall and ugly as Steve had described, a great monstrosity of metal. Steve had pointed it out to him as he had done the washing up in Sam’s cramped kitchen, pretending not to notice the thick scars which banded his arms from shackles and bad ideas, and told him about Tony Stark.

“He’s very good at what he does,” Steve began, pointing up at the tower. “I’m guessing you didn’t hear about New York – “

 Bucky looked at him, and he had soap suds in his hair. “Well,” he said, “spending time as a popsicle tends to mean you miss the evening news. But then  you knew that already,” and he pointed at the wall opposite. It had a chalkboard on which stretched from floor to ceiling, and someone had scrawled a numbered list of “Things to Research”. He thought he recognised the writing, in a letter or a postcard maybe, but then Steve put a plate into the drying rack with a clatter and the memory skipped away again. “You’re going to read about the Cold War, huh? I could help you with that. I was pretty integral in parts of it,” and his face was drawn.

 Steve looked up. “I thought you didn’t remember – “

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t remember what I did, but I’ve read about it. And well, Natasha helped me with parts of it, and we’ve managed to fill in the gaps. I remember that war, though – the tension and the whispers and the _secrets_ , stamped on my hand so that when I next woke up, I would know what to do – “ and he showed Steve a small metal plate on the palm of his metal hand. “They would wipe it afterwards, and wipe _me_ so that I was a blank. It meant that I could cope with it, and I suppose it meant that I didn’t fight my programming. I feel stronger now,” he said quietly, watching the clouds drift behind the New York skyline.

“Stronger?” Steve asked, draining the last of the water from the sink. “What, you feel _better_ like this?” he said, as if Bucky would change his mind at the slightest hint of disapproval. Of course, from the film reels he had seen in the museum, this seemed to have been the case in the past.

“I feel – intransient. They would shut me down if they thought I was remembering, but I have never been able to remember everything. I’m not sure, either, about what’s real. I know I was supposed to kill you,” he said slowly, and Steve inched the bread knife towards himself, just in case. Bucky watched him do it with a strange sense of detachment, as if he were outside his body.

“Nobody is going to shut you down,” Steve told him, and Bucky nodded but didn’t look at Steve.

“I was supposed to kill you – “ he said again, “and I didn’t. You saved me and I failed, but you don’t really save people, do you? You want to cut me up and fiddle around inside my head with branding irons and hammers,” and he was breathing heavily, eyes fixed on the empty knife-rack. “I’m supposed to kill you,” he added dreamily, and his gaze snapped to Steve. “I should have, really. They showed me what the good old US of A does to people. They woke me up just so that I could watch the atomic bombs. It might have been my birthday, because it seemed like a treat,” he said. Steve watched him carefully, as one watches a ticking bomb.

“You’re remembering,” he said cautiously, moving towards Bucky slowly. “You know how you got here, right? You passed out and hit your head, and then you had to be sedated in hospital,” and Bucky could tell that Steve loathed himself for that. He felt like he should have said something comforting, but he looked at his fingernails instead. They were clean for the first time in years, and – when he looked at his reflection in the microwave – his hair was short and neat. He looked more like a soldier than he ever had at the hands of HYDRA, and when he said as much to Steve, he smiled.

“We should get going,” Steve said, glancing at his watch. “Tony is expecting us, probably,” and Natasha walked into the room.

“He’s mad at you,” she told Steve. “Says that it was unfair of you to have a secret mission without letting him know, but I explained the circumstance. Of course, you two – “ and she gestured to them with her coffee mug – “know more about the circumstances than I do. We need to get Bucky somewhere safe, because HYDRA will look for him,” she added, and handed them each a mobile phone. “Use this to contact me. You’ll be flying in. Maria Hill is helping us,” and she turned to go.

Bucky watched her walk away. “She doesn’t trust me,” and he could see that she swung her left arm slightly awkwardly. “I shot her, didn’t I?” and Steve looked at him.

“You shot her,” he confirmed, and Bucky’s entire body sagged. He let out a long sigh.

“How many?” he said suddenly, seizing Steve’s arm with his metal one. Steve winced slightly, and flexed his fingers; Bucky lessened his grip slightly, but kept his hand tightly around Steve’s forearm. “How many have I killed?” he said again, eyes wild. With his free hand, he scrambled for the mobile which Natasha had left him, and stabbed at the buttons until Steve took it off him.

“Don’t,” he said gently, looking at Bucky. “It wasn’t you – it wasn’t!” he said, more firmly, as Bucky threw him a disparaging look. “You weren’t to blame for any of it,” he added. Bucky was struggling for the phone, metal arm once more getting tighter until Steve grimaced and twisted in his grip.

Natasha walked back in, a doughnut in one hand and another coffee in the other. “You boys ready yet? And yes, Barnes, you shot me. You shot Steve as well,” she pointed out, and Bucky let go of Steve.

“I shot you?” he whispered, backing away slightly until he hit his hip on the work-top. Steve nodded, rolling his shoulder, and Bucky would have dropped the mug if Natasha hadn’t grabbed it from his hand. “I – I succeeded my mission but then you’re my friend, or you were my friend. I don’t know,” he said numbly, and buried his head in his hands. “I pulled you out of the water, I remember that. And I left you on the water’s edge, and went to ground like a rat,” and his face had twisted into a snarl. “I skulked in the shadows for days, living off dropped pizza crust like they had taught me to,” and he stood up straighter.

Natasha looked at Steve, but he stayed staring at Bucky. Bucky smiled to himself. “They taught me to survive in any environment and so I did, and then I watched the news to find out what had happened. Nobody looked for me once I had changed my clothes and shoved my own arm back into its socket,” he added, and Steve flinched.

“I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you then and I’m sorry I can’t save you now – “

Natasha rapped him across the knuckles. “Nobody expected you to save him, only to stop him. And you found him when nobody else could – you found him before HYDRA, and now we need to get him somewhere safe before they catch up. I know how to break Soviet conditioning,” she said quietly, and opened the front door. “I used to break Americans all the time. Although that was usually simple seduction,” she admitted, and grinned to herself. “I won’t be doing that with you, probably. They taught me how to break their conditioning by mistake, when I watched them torture a man into submission. It will take time, and it will be painful,” she said warningly to Bucky. He nodded, and thought about how her currency was lies, and the secrets that hinged upon them, and tried not to shudder.

“Can I get all my memories back?” he asked, as they made their way to the waiting car. “There are a lot of important things I think I should remember,” he said, and he saw Steve duck his head. “I want to know, as well. How many people I killed, and how they died,” he insisted. Natasha sighed.

“We need to go,” was all she said, and got into the car. Bucky sighed, and followed Steve in. It was dark inside, and he could pretend that he was far away in some half-remembered training camp. He wasn’t sure if the training camp he dreamed about (and woke up screaming, the ghost of his missing arm tight around his throat) was the one where he and Steve had trained, or if it was the one where he was broken. He felt safer there, wherever it was. The grinning eye-sockets of the people he had killed could not look at him there, and their tombstone teeth could not grin.

The journey to the helicopter was short, and Natasha was silent, apart from a slight grumble about being delegated to drive around superheroes now. Steve was quiet too, but Bucky felt that if he were to open his mouth, the thoughts which tripped his tongue would be free, and he would tell them his most terrible secrets. He put his hand over his mouth, just in case. Steve shot him a glance, eyes bright in the semi-dark, and Bucky ignored him.

They were silent, too, in the helicopter. They could see the still-smoking remains of the buildings which had been destroyed when the helicarriers crashed down, and the smudges which used to be bodies. Their blood had soaked into the soil and stained the concrete, and Bucky could remember their screams, and the sound that their necks had made when he had snapped them as easily as breaking a toothpick. “The ghosts are howling,” he said, but nobody heard him over the noise of the helicopter blades. He thought that that might be a good thing.

Tony Stark was as loud as the tabloids had made out, and brash with it. He offered drinks and crisps – somehow, Bucky suspected he didn’t know how to cook much else – and he admired Bucky’s arm obviously, staring at it as a wolf stares at a piece of meat which just happens to be alive still. “Nice arm,” was all he said, hungrily eying the joint.

“I can’t take credit,” Bucky said stiffly, and Tony opened his mouth to retort. Steve frowned at him, and he shrugged.

“It _is_ nice, though. SHIELD would have wanted to examine it, given that it’s perilously close to their design for this sort of thing. Not so sure on the insignia,” and he pointed to the star emblem on the arm, visible beneath the thin cotton of Bucky’s borrowed shirt. Bucky flinched, and clenched his fist. Steve put a pacifying hand on his shoulder, and he felt his pace spike, and then controlled his breathing.

Maria Hill walked to the middle of the room, and they all turned to look at her. “The plan,” she called, “is simple. We stop HYDRA, and we do that by cutting their heart. The heads,” and she grimaced, “much as I hate to follow their idiotic motto, will grow again, if we just cut them out,” and Natasha Romanoff beside her nodded.

“Bucky Barnes – “ and she gestured at Bucky, who wanted to shrink into the shadows once more but stood tall under their gaze, “needs to be hidden. We’ll need safehouses across the world, focused for the moment on Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet states, but extending all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back again. They will run, and we must catch them,” and she smiled, teeth glinting in the light.

Tony Stark looked up. “I can get tech organised. We’re looking into providing internet connection across the entire world, so we can just use that as a pretext and put our own cables in  - “

 “Hold on,” said Steve, frowning. “We’re going to spy on people? I’m a _soldier_ , I thought I had made that clear,” he said, gesturing to Bucky. “We weren’t made for this.”

“You’re going to need to hide,” Maria Hill told them, as if Steve had not spoken. “You both – “ and she nodded at Bucky and Steve – “have experience of evading Nazi capture, which will be useful. We need information, and with half of SHIELD dead and the other half sending our secrets to HYDRA, we can’t rely on our own people any more.” She paused, face sombre. “We need you.”

“Can you rely on me?” Bucky asked, trying to smile. “I mean, I tried to kill most of the people in this room, and I don’t know if I can stop myself from trying again. I don’t know how many I have succeeding in killing, but I’m assuming from the million-dollar bounty on my head that I am good at it,” and the room went silent.

“You raise a valid point,” said Maria, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “You were an asset of HYDRA for fifty years at least, and you killed for them in the Cold War. I’d be willing to be that you were involved in operations in almost every major conflict we’ve had since then – does Syria ring any bells? What about Ukraine?” and she had kept her voice light, but now it rose. “What about the SHIELD operatives you murdered? My friends?”

“Maria,” said Natasha, quietly. “You’re too close to this,” and Maria flinched. The others watched them, and Steve still had his hand on Bucky’s arm.

“You were too close at New York, when Barton was compromised,” Tony reminded her. “You know, when he turned into a flying monkey – and Steve, yes, you got that reference – “

“Can we focus on the matter in hand, _please_?” said Steve, running a hand through his hair. “HYDRA are back, and their tech is as good as ours – in fact, Stark, I wouldn’t be too quick to rush to use your latest stuff.  If they had men, or women,” and he nodded at Maria and Natasha, “on the inside, then HYDRA will have the details of everything you have ever made.”

Bucky nodded beside him. “They put a tracking device in my arm, but I ripped it out,” he said, and, shoving his shirt aside, he showed them the gaping hollow of his armpit, leading to a tangle of wires and metal casing. “I left in the river when I rescued you,” he said to Steve, and Steve nodded.

“They might think you’re dead, then,” he said, and Bucky shrugged in a way he had seen his old self do, in the film reels where he laughed with Steve.

“I hope so. But we need to stop them, and they have half the courthouses, the police, the hospital staff, under their influence. I remember – “ and he gasped, “a room full of photographs, tacked onto the wall. It might be an old memory, from several reboots ago,” he warned, and Tony Stark nodded.

“What were the photographs?” he asked, looking again at Bucky’s arm. “Can you remember them?”

“They were children,” Bucky grimaced. “Children and loved ones of the people they wanted to exploit. The photographs were black-and-white, so it might be during the Cold War, but they deal in secrets still.” He nodded to Natasha. “You were on there,” and she froze. “I don’t know what secrets they have, but you can guarantee that they will be destructive. The people you’ve fucked, the way you’ve fucked them, where your children go to school, every last dollar you owe, your mortgage, your father’s dying words – they will have them all. They watched the world in secret for fifty years, and I helped them do it,” and he ducked his head.

“I can build you a new arm,” Tony said impulsively, and Bucky looked up at him. “I can make it better, and I can make it without any kind of markings at all, if you’d prefer. You could feel things fully, instead of the little information that bridges the gap between the neurons and the wiring – I could help you,” he ended softly, and exhaled. Bucky nodded at him, unable to do or say much more than that, and Steve smiled.

Maria looked at Steve and Bucky. “Where’s  Sam Wilson? He didn’t arrive with you,” and Steve’s head whipped up, eyes taut.

“He wasn’t at his, either,” Natasha said. “I assumed he would be here, but then he didn’t show,” and she pulled out her phone. “I have a message,” she told them, and opened it.

“Tasha?” Steve said, as her face paled. “Are you – are you alright?”

She smiled at him, and put her phone back into her pocket. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she stuffed them in her pocket next to the phone and her favourite knife. “Just a mixup at the bank. Apparently I owe them,” and she beckoned to Tony. “You’re good with money,” and she showed him the message.

He whistled. “I’d say you need to get down there as soon as possible, or they’re going to just take what they want,” and she nodded. He glanced at Steve and Bucky. “You two should come too. We’ve been looking for an apartment to house you in for a while, just to get you off the radar. They want to discuss the security you’re going to put down,” and Steve nodded slowly.

Bucky watched them like it wasn’t happening to him, but nodded serenely. “The bank,” he said, and nodded again. “What can we offer as security?”

Steve laughed. “Well,” he said, “I’m Captain America, so that might have some clout,” and he looked around at the group of SHIELD agents in their uniforms, badges ripped off. “Thank you for your time,” he said, and turned to head back into the lift.

Bucky followed him, trying to force his mind to understand the subtext of what he was hearing. Natasha had blown all her aliases, and so no bank would do business with her. She hadn’t, to the best of his knowledge – which was gleaned from sleepless nights with his ear pressed to the keyhole when she talked on the phone in the kitchen at Sam Wilson’s house – managed to get a convincing new one yet. She had whispered about someone called Barton, but Bucky (searching his memories of the missions they had served for Stalin) had no memory of him at all, just her laughing smile and pale, perfect skin under his hands. He blinked, and she looked at him as if she knew what he was thinking.

“We’ll drive,” she said to them, and pointed to Tony. “I refuse to drive any more superheroes around, unless it’s – “

A shot rang out, and Natasha reacted instantly, throwing herself bodily in front of the other three, knocking them to the floor. “Move!” she hissed, and began half-crawling towards the car, pulling them along with her, and another shot whizzed past his ear. Bucky sat where he had been knocked down, and shoved his hands over his ears. He barely flinched when a grenade rolled next to him, but Steve grabbed it and hurled it up into the air, where it exploded harmlessly. The screams of the passers-by had only just filtered through Bucky’s mind, and he examined their faces – eyes wide, mouths sagging in horror – with the same sort of detached interest with which he reviewed himself; something not-human and non-worthy.

“Bucky,” Steve said, urgently, from behind him. “You need to get into the car,” and pushed him. Bucky snarled at him, reaching for the place within himself where he could fight back, but Steve pushed him again, gently. “Get in,” he said again, and Bucky did.

Tony Stark was sat in the driver’s seat, and at the click of Bucky’s arm against the room, he put his foot down. “We need to get out of this car,” he said, scanning the busy streets. “Natasha?” he said, and she looked round from where she had been examining the bullet holes in the car. “What have you got?”

 She looked down at her stomach, where Steve knew there was a scar. “They’re Soviet-made,” she said, and swore in Russian under her breath. “They came from inside Stark Tower, judging by the angle. And I can’t discuss anything more until I’m sure that HYDRA isn’t listening. We need to dump the car,” and Steve nodded.

“Bucky?” he said, and he turned to where Bucky was sat frozen. “Are you – are you okay? Whatever you’re remembering isn’t real. You have to know that. It’s just false memories – “

“That’s what they said,” Bucky spat over clenched teeth, “about my memories of you. That it was an elaborate plot, that I didn’t deserve you or anything or anyone – and maybe they were right. I was going to let that grenade blow me to pieces.” He looked at Steve. “I didn’t want you to see that, though. I figured you’d seen me self-destruct a few too many times in bars and bar-fights,” and Steve smiled.

“It’s coming back, isn’t it? The memory?” he asked, and laced his fingers firmly around Bucky’s metal arm. “You deserve to be happy,” he said, as firm as his grasp. “You need to know the truth,” and Bucky shook his head.

“Truth, lies, life. Death. What’s the difference, Steve? Memory and forgetting -  I suppose this is like Peggy all over again, watching someone you used to know become someone you will never know again, huh?” and he was being cruel again, and he could see the hurt in Steve’s eyes.

“You’re tired,” Tony said to them both, surprising them. He looked affronted. “Hey, I can recognise it in others. I just don’t subscribe to this whole “eight hours a night” nonsense. I figure it’s a guideline, like alcohol units should be taken with a pinch of salt, and a squeeze of lime. And a shot of tequila,” he finished, smirking. Natasha elbowed him. “I’m _driving_ , Romanoff,” he reminded her, haughtily. “Seriously guys, you can get some sleep,” and Bucky felt a wave of fatigue wash over him suddenly.

“We’ll wake you in about an hour,” Natasha said softly. “When we get to where we’re going,” she added obtusely, and Steve huffed out a laugh which ended in a sleepy sigh.

Bucky tried to stay awake at first, but the car was warm and dark inside, and he tried to keep one eye open as he had been taught, but he didn’t have any matchsticks or electrodes to force his eyelids up. He dozed on Steve’s shoulder like he had done in so many trucks in so many different war zones, and so many different dreams.

He woke up to see Natasha cursing fluently, standing in the road, and Steve wincing every time she did so. Tony had parked by the side of the road, and as he chewed what might have once been a sandwich, Natasha was fiddling with a transmitter at the same time. There was a squawk from the transmitter, and a squeal from an answering one. “Barton,” she said quietly, and turned to walk a little down the road to talk to him. Bucky watched her, and thought for a second about her thighs, before shaking off the thought and thinking of Steve’s coathanger-thin shoulders shaking in the rain outside his house, when they were fifteen, and how he smelled when Bucky had hugged him for the first time. It had been a long fifty years, and he stretched his back slightly.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking around for any sort of hint, but there was none. His mouth was dry, and he had a slight headache; one of the ghosts was lose in his head again.

Steve looked at him, and Bucky noticed that his hair was messy, as if he had been running his fingers through it again. “We’re going – “ and he pulled him out of the car and dropped his voice. “We’re going to find Sam Evans, because someone texted Natasha a picture of his wingsuit all smashed to pieces, and we know it wasn’t you this time.” He looked as if he regretted that last comment, worrying a patch of dirt with his toe. “Anyway, he was supposed to be setting us up in a safehouse about three miles from where we think HYDRA is now based, but he’s gone AWOL,” and Bucky looked over at Natasha.

“She’s asking Hawkeye,” Steve told him. “He can rescue Sam, and then we can move in. It’d be better if we could leave the city but we need to be in range to communicate with everyone else – and we had to leave Stark Tower.”

Tony looked up from where he had been sulking. “Fucking HYDRA have ruined my plans for tonight. Pepper was going to come over, and we were going to talk it over again – “

“She’ll never take you back,” said Natasha, comfortably. “She knows you need her, though. But she’s got Happy now, and she is happy. You need to see that,” she said, slightly more sternly.  

“What I need to do, Romanoff, is to deal with HYDRA as soon as possible and then have lots of celebratory sex in my lovely tower,” he retorted.

Bucky raised an eyebrow in a way he had copied from the photographs. “Are you sure you’re not compensating?” he said, as if he had just thought of it, and hadn’t spent the night researching jokes. He wasn’t sure that he understood humour any more, but felt that it was a valuable part of the person he used to be.

Steve spluttered. “On that note,” he said smoothly, colour rising in his cheeks, “we need to ditch the car. Natasha got us a better one, and I’d hesitate to ask how, so we can use that one for the time being. The safe house is about half an hour away, and hopefully Clint will bring Sam to us there,” he explained, and pointed to a brown car across the street. “We’ll be taking that one. It has a tape deck,” he said gleefully.

Tony eyed him accusingly. “You weren’t around for tape decks. I was, and Natasha was, although she most likely played with butterfly knives rather than listened to _Black Beauty_ serials on cassette,” and she threw him a look but shrugged. Her phone beeped.

“Clint has Sam,” she said, and pointed to the car. “Better saddle up,” and they followed her outstretched arm.

“We’re going _analogue_ ,” Tony said, and looked around under the seats. “Better get me a sick bag,” he added, and Bucky laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are decided. The pieces are in place and their stratagem written in blood-red ink across their hearts; this might kill them, Bucky thinks. He almost hopes that it does, almost.

The safe house was another drive, and the white lines on the road had faded to grey in the semi-dark which had fallen by the time they arrived. It was  _ugly_ , even uglier than Stark’s tower, and squat. The windows had been boarded up, and the chimney-pots were lying smashed to pieces on the ground, and when Bucky stepped out of the car the air smelt of cordite and burning. He wasn’t sure if that were just the insides of his nostrils, because according to Steve and Natasha – who whispered about the report when they thought he was talking to Tony – his nose had bled every time they wiped his mind. Moving around the house, though – the front door was boarded up, too – he saw a bonfire on the slab of concrete next to the fence. A man he had not seen before, with close-cut hair and the straight back and careful eyes of a soldier, was burning a vast pile of paper.

“Clint!” Natasha said, and he looked up and smiled, almost burned his hand on an exuberantly lit piece of paper. “Where’s Sam?” she asked, and he nodded inside the house. Bucky peered through the back door (no lock, and the glass was not bulletproof) but saw only dingy carpets. Steve rolled his shoulders back again – stiff from the car – and headed inside, glancing at the gathering clouds before he did so.

“He’s upstairs, sleeping. He was a bit grumpy, said he didn’t need rescuing and was doing just fine, but then he passed out. He had an earset in which I burned, and then I decided that I had a load of other things to go as well, so,” and he shrugged, poking at the fire with a stick. “This place was a safehouse during the Cold War, going by the décor and the isolation. But SHIELD, and by definition HYDRA, don’t use it anymore because it’s “structurally unsound,”” and his voice went a little higher in mimicry.

Tony sniffed the air again. “So, what’s the plan? We hang out here, drinking vodka from the 80s and remembering the glorious days of  _glasnost_  until something happens?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a hip-flask. Natasha watched him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“You’re a cliché. It’s not even –“ but she looked at her watch and snarled out something in Russian. “It’s 5pm already, and we’ve wasted too much time already. HYDRA’s tech is far more modern than ours, because all Stark Industries tech is possibly compromised. We need to go old-school,” and Clint grinned at her. Bucky shifted from foot to foot, and thought about how Steve’s face would twist with tension when he saw the bloodied sheets on Sam’s bed.

“Luckily,” Clint said, “we have a fair few experts,” he said, and pointed to their assembled group. “We can’t reach Bruce Banner, and the Asgardians are dealing with their own crisis, according to the radio chatter from SHIELD,” he said. Natasha brightened.

“Radio chatter?” she said, and Clint nodded. She grinned.

“I rigged up a sort of speaker, calibrated it – the idiots still haven’t changed the frequency they operate on, or maybe they thought we’d be so useless without Stark’s pretty toys that we’d be unable to use it. But yeah, civil war in Asgard. Much like here,” he added, but he was unable to hide the excitement which lit up his face, and he held up a makeshift radio. It burst into life as he did so, and through the crackles, they managed to understand that Maria had been forced into hiding.

“She’ll have gone to ground, but she will have gone somewhere useful,” Steve said, and Natasha nodded. He sniffed, and went on. “She mentioned to me – a while ago, when SHIELD was free from suspicion – that she had been spending time with Peggy. See, the thing is,” and he stood straighter, as if it would hide the fact that his eyes were a brighter blue when he was trying not to cry. “Peggy can’t  really remember people from one visit to the next. She might – the fog of memory might lift, just for a few minutes, and then she’ll slip back and she’ll have no idea who anyone is. And Maria said that she had been spending time with Sharon, my neighbour – “

 Tony raised an eyebrow. “Sharon, your neighbour. The hot one who turned down coffee in your apartment that one time? She told me and Maria about it. Seemed to think it was funny that you thought she might have been straight – but seriously, you never found out her surname?”

Steve blinked once, twice, and Bucky looked as if he was threatening to smirk. Tony looked at the group, and sighed. “Her name,” he said, with the air of one who was talking to a very dim toddler, “is Sharon. Sharon  _Carter_ , _”_ he added, and the side of his mouth twitched. Steve’s gaze flickered to Bucky.

“So – are she and Maria – “ Clint began, and then stopped. “How do you know all this? I mean, what with the whole Winter Soldier thing,” and he looked at Bucky, “and then HYDRA being around still, and I only just got back from Ukraine but even  _so_  how can you know this?” and he fiddled with the radio until the crackle had died down.

Tony smirked again, as if he were privy to the whispers in the shadows behind a throne; perhaps, Bucky considered, he was. He seemed to be that kind of person. “Natasha told me,” he said finally, and Clint turned to her.

“Tasha, you didn’t think this was relevant to – “

She tossed her hair out of her eyes. “You’re asking me why I didn’t tell Steve something which Sharon clearly didn’t  _want_ to share with him? She told me, because she had to tell someone. Secrets are like that. They’ll suck out your soul if you let them,” she said seriously, and Clint nodded slowly.

Steve seemed to remember how to breathe again, and he looked away from Bucky at last. “She said – she said that she didn’t want to be a ghost. That she knew that when I looked at her, I wasn’t seeing  _her_  but Peggy, and I was just searching for Peggy again,” he said, looking down at his feet. “She’s with Maria, I take it?”

Natasha took the radio from Clint. “You’ll  _break_  it, doing that – and yes, we believe so. They will have gone to be with Peggy, from the hints Maria gave me before we left.”

Steve nodded. “I better – I better go and check on Sam quickly.”

Bucky watched him walk away, and remembered a sliver: watching Steve shut his front door after a funeral, telling Bucky he didn’t need him – but then, he considered,  did that happen? Was it more implemented memories, or was it true? The memory hurt him, deep down in the pit of his stomach, and that made him think that it might just be sad enough to be true. Bucky wished he could remember Peggy. It seemed that Steve loved people who would leave him, whether through age or Soviet mind-games.

“I can’t remember much,” he said, “but I know that – helping you is something that I have to do. I don’t know why either, but I will always be loyal to Steve. And to you,” he said quickly, as they exchanged glances. “Steve was there for me when I needed him – mainly,” and his lip curled, “mainly to make me feel better after getting chucked by – by someone,” and he sighed. “HYDRA, SHIELD, call them what you will – they want to take control of everything,” and he turned as the back door swung open again and Steve walked out with blood on his hands.

“How is he?” asked Tony, sombre for once.

“He’ll live,” Steve said shortly, wiping his hands on his jacket. He turned to the others. “Do we know our next movements? Because I get the feeling that this plan isn’t really a plan just yet. More a woozy sort of choreography,” and Clint laughed.

“We split up. One night here, and then we need to go to ground properly. Natasha and I have divided the group already, just to stop squabbling,” and his eyes narrowed as he looked at Tony.

“We split up,” Natasha repeated, red hair swinging behind her, “into pairs. Steve and Bucky, you  need to stay together. Tony is going to have to go back and grovel to them and say he’s so sorry but he was  _drunk_  and it seemed like a laugh to go off with wanted fugitives and he’s an idiot.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That shouldn’t be too hard,” and he shrugged.

“Natasha and I will look for HYDRA operatives in deep cover, in SHIELD and the police and the governments of the world,” said Clint. “Tasha got to some, but we can’t run the risk of any more being allowed to fester. Sam is going with Tony. He needs hospitalisation, and he needs it quickly, and Tony can say he was rescuing him from the clutches of some dangerous terrorists,” and Tony nodded in agreement. “Plus,” Clint reminded him, “we need you to be able to access money. We’re all going off-grid, but Tasha and I both have workable false identities.”

Bucky looked up as Steve moved to stand next to him. “Sam wanted to stay with me, when I first suggested looking for Bucky. We had his file,” and he nodded at Natasha, “and we both wanted to do whatever it took to help. He wanted to help me, and we’re going to send him home because he was tortured? I don’t think we  _can_ , and we don’t know why they hurt him.”

Bucky shrugged. “They never tortured unless they could get intel of some kind. I mean, everything they do is a sort of torture, really, but well. I can’t remember the worst of it. Just the smell of burned flesh – but then that was practical,” he said, matter-of-factly, and watched Steve blanch.

“Your life was always worth more than mine,” he said quickly, before Steve could disagree. “I remember that,” he added, cautiously, as if testing the water, and when Steve smiled he dived right in. “I remember you,” and he ducked his head.

Steve cleared his throat, as if it would draw attention away from the fact that he was grinning. “We can help with HYDRA hunting,” he said. “I mean, we both have combat experience, we both know what to look for, and Bucky was there for most of it,” he qualified, and Bucky smiled tentatively at him.

“No,” he said softly, and watched Steve’s face fall. “I wasn’t there. The Winter Soldier was there, and they moulded him into a weapon perfectly. And now I’m back. A part of me, at least, can remember snapping necks for HYDRA but it isn’t an organisation. It – “ and he was struggling with the words and the fog of memory which hid them from him – “It came from Nazi Germany but it wasn’t Nazism in action, it was pure evil, and in this world of cameras and smartphones and people believing that they are free, evil can flourish – “ and he was breathing heavily, memories just out of reach, and Steve put a hand on his shoulder. He did not flinch.

“We can stop it,” Natasha said sharply. “I don’t hold with the idea that the whole world is for the taking and freedom is an inconvenient barrier to security, and SHIELD had become so concerned with security that they did not stop to ask the people they defended about their choice. And that was HYDRA, working in the shadows – SHIELD was never the good guys and nor am I. You two,” and she nodded at Steve and Bucky, “need to hide. Stay hidden.”

Steve looked up. “We’re not spies,” he said, and Clint sighed. Tony looked from one to the other to the other, and lit a cigarette.

“Do you mind if I smoke? Sorry, it’s getting a little dull. Besides, if I’m to resume my bad behaviour, I need all the vices I can muster,” he muttered, sulkily. “I know what I’m going to do. No quibbling over right and wrong and freedom for me,” he added, scowling.

The sun dipped over the horizon, tinting Natasha’s hair a bolder red, and Steve’s hair gleamed golden. Bucky thought about his messily shorn head, and how vain he used to be about his hair. He forced the thought out of his mind – and he had gotten good at that, at making himself forget things. He wished it worked both ways; he wished he could make himself remember the first time he met Steve, and the first time they met after Steve had had the serum. He wished he could remember why his heart skipped, sometimes, when he looked at him; it was probably, he reasoned to himself, a residual issue from the wires of his new arm.

“We’re going to hide then,” he heard himself say, but it sounded like it was coming from a long way away. “We came all this way, we’re three miles from their base, and Sam is bleeding out upstairs and we’re fussing over ideologies – “ and Steve moved in front of him as his fingers flicked one another, desperate for the blade of a knife.

“We’re taking the brown car,” he said quickly. “We’re staying in the city – “

 There was a squawk from the radio which Natasha held, and an answering crackle from inside the house. Clint stiffened, and jogged to the front door. “It’s important,” he said, and disappeared inside. Natasha listened through her radio, but she could only hear the one-way traffic.

“They’re moving,” she whispered. “Well, they’re staying out, but their signal is moving, listen,” and she held out the radio. The sound crackled and faded and looped back to loudness again. “They’re not where we think they are,” and Clint sprinted from the house.

“They’re in Europe,” he said, and his hands were shaking slightly. Bucky looked at him, and then looked at Steve. “They’re in London and Paris and Berlin and Moscow, and Madrid and Bupadest,” he added, and Steve frowned before turning to Bucky.

“Well,” he began, and Natasha shook her head.

“You can’t take Sam,” she said, softly. “Not yet, not whilst he’s injured. He’d die and you’d feel terrible and Bucky would have to see what happened to you when he died,” and  her words were like a punch to the gut. “I’ve read the file, and it wasn’t pretty.”

Steve swallowed. “Bucky and I could go to Germany. We – we know it,” and he closed his eyes in hope.

Natasha tried not to roll her eyes. “You knew it, yes. Fifty years ago, sixty, you knew it very well. It’s different now,” she reminded them, and watched their faces fall in unison. “It’s all very well to be in Berlin when the biggest threat is the Nazis and you can sit there with blood under your fingernails and think about freedom, but now it’s nuclear. Now, the bad guys have come crawling out from under the cracks and they’re hungry and your hands are bloody and you’ll have no idea whose blood it is,” and Clint looked steadily at her. She sighed.

“You’re going to go to Europe then, you two. You’ll have to look for HYDRA in every city – not like Clint and I can speak the languages, or anything,” she added, and sighed again.

Bucky tried to suppress a smile. “I can speak – I woke up knowing Russian and German, and last night I remembered my Polish and Czech and French. I’ll remember more tonight – did  _you_  forget, Natalia,” and she blinked once, twice, “did you forget how I talked you into giving me a secret or too? Well, a lot more than just talking, but. Turned out we were fighting for the same side, back then,” and she screwed up her hands into fists. “Did I say too much?” he asked, worrying at his bottom lip with his front teeth.

She shook her head. “You did a lot more than talking, Barnes. But fine, your languages are up to scratch, and I know from experience – “ and she shoved her shirt aside to show the bandage wrapped around her chest and shoulder – “that you’re a good shot. Steve,” and Steve looked up from where he had been watching the fire. “You’ll both need to come up with a good cover story. Europe’s never been too keen on your eternal desire to see America as the good guys and the world policemen and the saviours of the broken, so nobody should recognise you. You can keep the names,” she decided, and Clint frowned. Tony pulled out another cigarette and lit it from the fire, nearly singing his eyebrows.

“Their names –“ Clint began, and Steve stepped forwards.

“Bucky’s name is all he has,” he snapped. “Take whatever you want from me, but leave him his name,” and Clint’s eyes tightened but he nodded. The fire had burned low now, and Tony was poking at it with a stick, muttering under his breath.

“It’s like babysitting an emotionally stunted, grumpy child,” Natasha said to Steve as they watched Tony, and turned to go inside.

“You’re leaving in the morning,” she said to Bucky. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay in the USA, anyway. Go to ground. Get yourselves a little flat in London or Berlin or Paris, watch the sun set every day because it might be the last time. This,” and she looked at Clint, “is how to stop yourself from breaking. You’re going to need papers but they’re easy enough, and avoid any sort of metro until you’re sure you can cope with it.” Clint held her gaze steadily, and something unseen passed between them. Bucky squinted, and wished he could understand their silence.

“We can do that,” Steve told her, and his fingers curled for a second around Bucky’s, and then were gone so quickly that he wondered if it had happened.

Natasha nodded once, and then – circles under her eyes deepening as she frowned – stepped closer to Steve. “If he snaps. If he tries to kill you, tries to set off a bomb in Red Square or the Place de la Concorde or Picadilly Circus – could you kill him? Look at me,” she said urgently, as he kept his gaze firmly planted on his own feet. “Steve. Could you do it? If you can’t, then we – “

“I – I would stop him,” Steve said, uncertainly. Bucky pretended he wasn’t listening, and instead chose to focus on the grime under his nails. He watched Steve from the corner of his eye, and forgot his own strength for a split second, and ripped his fingernail in two. Blood welled up beneath the nail, and he concentrated on that until Steve nodded to Natasha.

She stepped back, satisfied, although her eyes were almost as sad as Steve’s had been, the day he had said Bucky’s name and made him remember. Bucky thought that was odd, actually – years of brainwashing, and all it took was Steve to say his name, and the memories overwhelmed him. Now, of course, the floodgates were back in place, and not even Steve’s touch could reawaken what had been stolen from the corners of his mind.

He brooded that night, rather than sleeping. Sleeping was no longer the sanctuary it had been when he was wiped back to ground zero and forced to thrash around, strapped to a gurney, until his last ghosts had been exorcised. Sleeping was hellfire and freedom and choking chains, now that he knew what he had done. He saw their faces – a neverending stream of people, necks snapped or faces pale, dribbling blood, from where their throats had been split under his knife, or stab-wounds in their hearts. He had been an anatomically precise murderer, or so the television reports had said. Efficient, brutal, amoral – and that was just how Natasha had described him, although that might have been a compliment. The shadows of his past could creep into first-pole position when he slept, and he could never outrun them.

So, he brooded, listening to the slow rise and fall of the breathing of the others. Sam was whimpering in his sleep, and in time with that Steve was snoring gently, and the snoring sounded like a home he could barely remember. Green faded paint on the walls, peeled back to reveal Steve’s first drawings, chalk and charcoal, on the plaster. Steve and Bucky, against the world - but then, he considered, perhaps this was just what he wanted to think. Murderers go to hell, that much he knew, and Steve could never love someone like him.

He watched the first light of dawn creep through the curtains, and fought back a smile that he didn’t understand as Steve stirred. “Time to go,” he said softly, and Steve sat up. Sam shifted too, and tried to sit up, but collapsed back onto the bed, wincing.

“I’m going to be going with Tony, right?” Sam said, and his voice was stronger than it had been the night before. “Fucking  _HYDRA_ ,” he added morosely, twisting over to look at his shattered shoulder-blade. “I think I can actually see bone fragments,” he said, and sounded almost delighted at that. Steve, pulling on a t-shirt, tried not to smile. Bucky told himself not to read too much into that, and stretched out, straightening and bending his metal arm to loosen the joint.

“You need oil?” Sam asked, watching him. Bucky jolted, and looked over his shoulder at him. “I mean,” Sam went on, “it’s just that I have a fair amount because the Falcon suit needs it every so often. You know,” and he winced as he moved, “like, lubrication – “ and then his eyes, bright in the half-light, flickered from Steve to Bucky. “Did I make Captain America blush before seven a.m.  _again_? Must be a new record, although I’d have to check with Natasha. But seriously, Barnes,” and Bucky sat up straighter, one soldier to another, “if there’s anything I can do to help – “

“Thank you,” Bucky said, and the word felt like foreign fruit on his tongue, “but I’ll be fine, for now. And – “ he added, somewhat cautiously, “the same to you. I – I hurt you badly, the first time, and now you’re hurt again and it’s my fault – “

Steve moved to sit next to him, and this time Bucky did not flinch when Steve’s fingers brushed over his shoulder. “You have done nothing wrong. Apart from once, when we were about seventeen, and you flirted with that girl from the ice-cream place all week just because you  _knew_  I liked her.” He smiled at Bucky.

Sam grinned at them. “Wait, you two used to flirt with  _girls_? Wow. Wow, seriously. I mean, Steve, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t have you down as – “

Steve shrugged. “Bucky did the flirting, and I tended more to being beat up in alleyways,” he said, like the words meant nothing, and then he paused. “Of course, Bucky always had my back,” and Bucky looked at him wordlessly.

“You should tell him,” Sam said, looking between the two of them. “You should tell him everything you know about Bucky Barnes,” and Steve nodded.

Natasha walked in, looking alarmingly cheerful for that time in the morning, and Clint followed her, clutching at a coffee cup like it was a lifeline. “You’re up then,” she said. Clint grunted at them, and moved, zombie-like, towards the battered sofa where Bucky had slept. He collapsed onto it, and Natasha rolled her eyes. “You have no reason to be sleepy, Barton,” she said. “I did most of the work last night, anyway,” and he opened one eye and looked at her.

“A lady never tells,” he said, grumpily. She laughed, and poked him, but before she could retort Tony walked in. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and his face was creased from where he had slept on the armchair in the living room.

“We’re all packed,” he said, and then looked around the room. “Morning all. Rise and shine, sprinkle cocaine on your cornflakes, and sentiments to that effect. Time to go,” and he shoved an envelope at Steve. “Plane tickets,” he said, and took a sip of his own coffee.

Steve pulled the tickets out of the envelope, and looked back at Tony. “We’re going to Paris?” he asked, and Tony shrugged.

“It was the first ticket out of New York, and it’s fairly central if you were going to stick to Western Europe. Figured that Clint and Natasha might like to hang out in Eastern Europe – seemed far more their thing. Anyway, you both speak French,” he added, and Steve nodded.

“Seriously,” Natasha said, “we have to go,” and Clint and Tony helped Sam to stand. He winced as he did so, face drawn and eyes tight, but he managed to be half-led, half-carried from the room. He left bloodstains on the sheets where he had slept, and the smell reminded Bucky of the cold sting of a knife in winter, and of his own blackened fingers in the snow, twitching as the life left them. He remembered the burning too, as the frostbite spread through his mangled arm, and then the hiss of a blade, blood spurting on snow – and then, white noise.

A lot of his previous life seemed to be white noise, and he said as much to Steve once they were sat in the back of the car. Bucky had been dressed in Tony’s clothes – they were about the same height, and Steve was much taller than he was now – and he fidgeted with the cuffs on his jacket until Steve took his hand away. “What about now?” he said, gently, when Bucky had mentioned how he had had no idea you could hear pain until HYDRA, and his eyes were sad.

“It’s – more colourful. I get flashes of colour from before, when you talk about the past, and I can remember for a split second. But I saw the news report once they found out about me, and everything SHIELD ever knew was uploaded onto the web. The only colours then were blood and grey and black,” he said, and he hated himself that his voice was shaking as he spoke. “All those people – all that blood, soaking my hands – “

“We all have blood on our hands,” Steve reminded him, and spread his own hands out on the seat between them. “Mine are more stained than yours, because I killed for a government, for a little while. Knowingly,” he added, when Bucky opened his mouth to retort. “I knowingly supported an unfair regime. I killed people who were just – “

“Don’t you dare say that they were following orders,” Bucky said, and his own vehemence surprised him. “They  _knew_ , they knew that they were sending millions to their deaths – and I’ve read about it, I’ve read about everything I missed, and they knew what they were doing, the Nazis,” and he was breathing heavily, metal hand clenched into a fist so tight that he could almost feel the vertebrae he used to snap in the same way.

“You didn’t, though. You didn’t know. You can fight better than anyone I’ve ever met – you can beat  _Natasha_ ,” Steve said, “and you can speak so many languages which you never knew before. And you have a look in your eyes which is new, but only when you talk about the past that we used to share. You were trained to take up the mantel of a monster, but that doesn’t mean that you are one. I used to become a dancing bear for the establishment, telling boys from Brooklyn and Queens that they could sign up and get out and be buried under the American flag. But I don’t dance anymore,” and he was fierce and beautiful, and Bucky could believe that he would take on anybody twice his size for what was right.

Bucky nodded, eyes closed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I keep doing that,” and he huffed out a nervous laugh. “Our cover story – what is it?”

“We’re friends,” Steve said, looking away, “living together. Natasha thinks it would be better if we were – together, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel  - “

“Will it help us stop HYDRA?” Bucky asked, hardly daring to breathe. “I’d do anything to do the right thing again. Wipe out the red in my ledger,” and Steve looked at him, curiously. “I fought with the Black Widow, or so she tells me,” he reminded him, and Steve nodded.

“We’ll be living in Paris for the time being. They won’t look for us there, and we can hunt them down like we used to hunt the Nazis. Lots of them, actually, are Neo-Nazis, according to the records Natasha got hold of – I wouldn’t ask,” he added, as Bucky frowned and opened his mouth. “The idea is that we pose as whatever it takes to gain access to their intelligence services. We’re not spies, but we’ll have to be, for a little while. We’re not half as known in Europe as we are in America; they have their own SHIELD, although hopefully not as corrupt. If Paris proves a dead end then we try London – lots of people wanting to hide from their pasts there, so I think we might fit in well. Plus,” he added, “I like cities, don’t you? They hum with life and we hum with them,” and he smiled so brightly at Bucky that he grinned for the first time since whenever that film reel was taken, when he was a kid, and so in love with Steve Rogers that the thought of leaving him to fight the Nazis alone was more painful than any torture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is turning more into an espionage thing, which Steve is not happy about. I'm going to write other parts exploring what the other characters are up to, but mainly wanted to get Steve and Bucky alone for the time being.  
> Anyway. Kudos and comments are always appreciated, or hit me up on [tumblr](http://enjolrastic.co.vu) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/stevelovesbucky)


	4. Chapter 4

“It was always a long shot,” Steve said, watching the smoke drift across the night sky. It had shadowed the whole of Orion’s Belt before he spoke again. “Paris is like that,” he added, and Bucky watched him from the corner of an eye.

“We shouldn’t have trusted anyone,” he said. “I mean, dressing up as _delivery men_ might have worked if you were only six foot tall and I didn’t have any metal arms. It might have worked if, I don’t know, you hadn’t been ridiculously courteous to that woman with the idiot child who lost his fucking balloon. But well, the final straw was definitely the fact that you were delivering stuff with your _face on_ , oh my God Steve –“

“Alright,” Steve said, irritably. “We got half the info we needed. He’s got ties to HYDRA. And if you’re on about those t-shirts, it’s not my fault that that was what Bellamy ordered for his kid – “

“We should have known,” Bucky said, voice low. “I shaped this century with my hands and my blood and we go and trust someone called _Bellamy_ as if life is never ironic?”

Steve was grinning. “You sound like you used to when I’d get mud all over your back when you were carrying me back from fights,” he said, and Bucky tried to smile. He thought that the old Bucky would have smiled, maybe punched Steve lightly on the arm – but he reached out, and saw the cold gleam of his metal arm in the moonlight.

“I’m never going to be that person again,” he said. “I can’t even remember that person, apart from the odd flash here and there. I remember – kisses. Girls, maybe. It could be boys for all I know, but then my acquaintance with them is mostly murdering them. I – “

“You were a complete idiot,” Steve said, still grinning. “You were the first person I – well. You’ve read the Smithsonian exhibit, haven’t you?”

Bucky frowned, and closed his eyes. He was reminded, suddenly and horrifically, of Pierce with his hands in Bucky’s hair, forcing his head underwater – _do you remember? Do you want to breathe again, soldier?_ – until he was sick. Another memory surfaced then, Pierce with his hands in Bucky’s hair, forcing his head – but he slammed the door shut on that scene. He felt sick.

“I’m tired,” he said, and Steve nodded.

“We can sleep here tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll need to report to Natasha. That’s Bellamy, Lesauvage and Voclain for sure with ties. She sent word last week that she had found a nest of them in Ukraine. Sam’s out of hospital, and we’re to meet him in London.” Bucky nodded at that, and stretched out across the roof-top where they were perched.

“You used to sleep curled up,” Steve said, as if he couldn’t help himself. “You used to eat ice-cream too quickly every time and get brain-freeze, and you used to crack your knuckles in the bath for some reason. You used to sleep curled up next to me,” he went on. “I – “

“That man is dead,” Bucky said. He opened one eye to see Steve nodding slowly at him.

“I wish – I wish you could remember. The Smithsonian said that there had always been “speculation” about our relationship, but they threw around all that shit about brothers-in-arms and stuff. They never bothered to ask anyone who knew us, but then maybe they didn’t want the truth to come out?”

“Nice pun,” said Bucky. He stretched again, shifting slightly. “Were we – I can’t remember what it’s like to be with someone for love or for happiness and not for information, or to make it easier to slit their throats –“ and his metal hand convulsed, as if reaching for a knife.

“Did HYDRA – “

“They – well, I don’t remember them ever making me do anything using _force_ , but then, considering they wiped my memory – Natasha said they used to make her do things for them. God bless the USSR,” he said, and laughed. It came out as a cackle, and Steve shivered slightly.

“I’ll kill every one of them,” Steve promised. “You sleep – I’ll keep watch, and wake you for your turn. Just like old times.”

“Just like old times,” echoed Bucky. He had never felt more alone.

 


End file.
